


Knifetalk

by mortalitasi



Series: into the forest [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Action, Gen, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:10:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Tevinter slavers have a lesson to learn, and the Warden is their teacher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knifetalk

The room is heavy with the scent of blood and the must of living things that have been shut in for days at a time— an underlying sourness of filth the sort of which cannot be washed or scoured clean, like the bitterness of a sick man’s leavings or the tang of urine.

Zevran knows this smell. He had been its bedmate for those few dark years before the Crows had found him, the ones spent in and out of cages with men that are now faceless with memory passing them around like playthings and inspecting them as though they were horses to be bartered for at an auction.  _This one has good legs_ , he recalls them saying of one of his cagemates.  _He’d do well in the pits._

Beside him, Alistair is whispering to the Warden furiously. 

"We’re not  _seriously_ considering talking to him, are we?” The boy’s face is almost hilariously contorted. Morrigan rolls her eyes. “I feel dirty.”

The Warden doesn’t answer. She is still staring dead ahead, her brown gaze fixed on the man standing at the head of the group of armed slavers. His robes mark him as magus— leader, supervisor, organizer, and most certainly, a blood mage. His gauntlets are richly set with the same manner of motifs and stones his sweeping robes are. Unmistakably Tevinter in aspect, design, and shape. The starburst of Minrathous is emblazoned on his chest, gleaming bright over the ruby at the center of the robes’ vest. 

How opulent. 

"You went through my men like they were nothing," the blood mage says. He has a ponderous monotone to his voice, the type of man that would sound bored even begging for his life. "I assume this means Devera is also dead?"

Silence.

"Pity… she was such a keen little thing. No matter," he continues, drawing himself up like a peacock ready to flare his plumage. He has a wide-set face, a head absent of any hair, and frightening eyes, the sort you’d see on someone like a slaver. They sit deep in his face, shadowed by great red brows thick as a finger but studiously plucked to stay in shape. When he smiles from behind his beard, it’s a slow, slimy thing, full of double meanings and dishonored deals. 

Zevran knows this sort of man the way he knows the smell of the room: one that likes his boys and girls young and obedient, that wants his messes cleaned, and quickly. One that kills without quarter, without passion, without sense. A revolting person, on all accounts.

Trite, coming from an assassin. 

"For convenience’s sake, I will guess that you are the Warden I have heard so much about," the mage is saying. When he moves, the chains and charms resting against his chest clink and chime. Zevran wonders how many of those were taken off of bodies, or paid for in currency that does not come in coins. "One can scarcely get a word besides ‘Warden’ out of Regent Loghain these days. It’s surpassed even ‘gold’ in popularity, and he does so love that one. I,  _Warden_ , am Caladrius.”

Mahariel’s face does not change as the magister comes to stand almost directly beneath them, two of his men following. She is watching him with a dull, almost unamused look. She is out of place even here, in the heart of the alienage, with her proud, open-shouldered stride and the vallaslin along her temples; and not for the first time, Zevran asks himself if the Dalish are like snowflowers of Nevarra, blossoms comely and strong that can only grow in the soil of their homeland. 

His mother, he supposes, had been like this too, and had stumbled into the world beyond her clan and the borders of her forest as well; and she had withered, a snowflower planted in ground it could not recognize. What good is strange and terrible beauty if it cannot last?

The mage is still speaking. Zevran supposes he should listen. 

"My final terms are these: a hundred sovereigns from you in return for a letter bearing the seal of the teyrn of Gwaren to implicate our dear regent in this sorry business. We leave, unharmed… with the rest of our slaves intact. What say you?"

Caladrius looks pleased with himself. His yellow-brown eyes follow Mahariel as she lightly takes the stairs down to the warehouse floor.

Though the men at his side lift their crossbows at her approach, the magister moves forward to face her. Zevran realizes with some shock and a good deal of disbelief that Caladrius does not think she poses a threat. The idea seems preposterous now, after months of fighting at Mahariel’s side and taking her orders and watching her surmount odds Zevran has never known another person to face. She is steel made blood and flesh, tempered in fire. 

He remembers he hadn’t thought she would have been much of a challenge, either. Luckily enough, Caladrius has neither the looks nor the good sense of a potential recruit. He hopes. 

Zevran and the other two have come to stand behind her when she speaks. 

"I have a counter-offer for you."

And there is that self-assured smile again, the one that means Caladrius thinks he has won already. “Oh? And what would that be?” 

It happens so quickly that no one— not the bowmen, not the bodyguards with their heavy crossbows, not Zevran, nor swift Morrigan or hyperaware Alistair— has time to react.

In the space of time it takes for Zevran to breathe in, Mahariel has drawn one of the long dar’missan at her waist, arced the blade, and struck outward.

The ironbark sings as it slices cleanly through the magister’s neck, cleaves its way through protective ward, skin, muscle, and bone, and sails away unobstructed when it cuts free out on the other side. Blood speckles the floor as Caladrius’ headless body twitches nervelessly, the hands opening and closing and opening and closing until finally it falls to its knees and collapses. Red fountains from the even stump that was once a throat and soaks through the heavy, expensive robes. 

One of the elven children in the cages arranged against the warehouse’s walls screams and begins to cry, and Mahariel straightens; the head is rolling, cheek over nose over cheek over ear, and only stops when it hits the ankle of a bodyguard, its glaring eyes sightless and terrified but not yet clouded. 

The slaver shrieks in Tevene, unintelligible, and the guards, bumbling, arm themselves again. Zevran is grinning as he unsheathes his daggers. 

At last, a language he can understand. 


End file.
